The communication of friendly and hostile attitudes by verbal and non‐verbal signals

TLDR

The study examined how verbal messages and non‑verbal styles jointly influence perceptions of friendly, neutral, and hostile attitudes. Two experiments were conducted in which participants rated videotapes of a performer delivering messages in matching or mismatched non‑verbal styles, after independent ratings of each cue type were used to match their relative strengths. Non‑verbal cues consistently had a stronger effect on perceived friendliness/hostility than verbal cues, with the effect size depending on cue strength—non‑verbal signals explained 12.5 times more variance than verbal ones in Experiment 1 but only 1.67 times in Experiment 2, and inconsistent cue combinations were judged as insincere, unstable, and confusing.

Abstract

Abstract Two experiments are reported here in which Ss were asked to rate videotapes of a performer reading friendly, neutral and hostile messages in a friendly, neutral or hostile non‐verbal style. These messages and non‐verbal styles had previously been presented independently to a separate group of Ss jor rating, in order to obtain an estimate of their individual strengths in terms of six rating scales, and thus permit a matching of verbal (messages) and non‐verbal (styles) cues in the experiment where both types of cues were presented in combination. The results of both experiments indicate that non‐verbal cues had a greater effect on ratings made on 7‐point scales, such as hostile‐friendly, than verbal cues. The magnitude of this greater effect of non‐verbal cues, however, was dependent on the relative strength of non‐verbal as opposed to verbal cues. In the first experiment, both types of cues were approximately equal in strength when ruted alone; here non‐verbal cues accounted for 12.5 times us much variance us verbal cues, and produced 5.7 times as much shift on the ratitig scales. In the second experiment the verbal cues were much stronger than the non‐verbal cues when rated alone. Here the relative effect of non‐verbal cues in the second experiment was diminished; the ratio of non‐verbal : verbal variance was now 1.67:1. When verbal and non‐verbal signals were inconsistent, the performance was rated as insincere, unstable and confusing ‐ which was not found in earlier experiments on the superior‐inferior dimension.